Saturday, October 14, 2017

Magic Beans

Voltaire drank 50 cups a day, despite his doctor's warnings. So did Balzac, who once said, "Were it not for coffee one could not write, which is to say one could not live.”

Kant, like clockwork, drank a cup after dinner every evening. L. Frank Baum drank five, every morning, loading each with cream and sugar. Kierkegaard preferred to add only sugar to his―30 cubes per cup.

Bach, Bacon, Franklin, Johnson, Proust, Mahler, Sartre and Camus guzzled coffee all day long. Bach wrote an opera about coffee-drinking. Franklin marketed his own line of beans.

Beethoven drank coffee as his breakfast, brewing it himself. His recipe called for 60 beans per cup, which he'd count out by hand meticulously.

Teddy Roosevelt drank a gallon of coffee a day, sweetened with a new invention, saccharine. His son said TR's favorite mug was “more in the nature of a bathtub” than a cup.Gertrude Stein adored coffee nearly as much; she called it a "happening." Patti Smith reports in her memoir she can drink 14 cups with no effect on her sleep. And Margaret Atwood so loves coffee she has her own brand.Cartoonist Flash Rosenberg understands coffee's pivotal role better than anyone: “I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee."